14 April, but conditions inhibited safe rescue by air. They were not rescued until they were reached by a civilian motor vessel at 1130 hours, roughly 11 hours after touching down. This was the first successful night ditching of a CS2F or S2F (later S-2) Tracker. 15 April Twenty-four airmen escape with their lives when a Boeing KC-97G Stratofreighter, 52-0919, of the 307th Air Refueling Squadron, 307th Bomb Wing, crashes and burns on takeoff from Lincoln AFB, Nebraska, when the undercarriage collapses. The only casualties were two airmen who suffered leg fractures and five others who suffered minor cuts and burns. 18 April U.S. Air Force Douglas C-124C Globemaster II 52-1062 crashes into a 450 ft (137 m) hillside after taking off in heavy fog from Stephenville-Harmon Air Force Base, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, killing all 9 on board. 1 May A CIA Lockheed U-2A, 56-6693, Article 360, flown by Francis Gary Powers is shot down by a SA-2 (Guideline) missile near Degtyarsk in the Soviet Union during an overflight codenamed Operation GRAND SLAM, the twenty-fourth and most ambitious deep-penetration flight of the U-2 program. Powers parachutes down and is captured. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announces on 7 May to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and thus the world, that a "spyplane" has been shot down but intentionally makes no reference to the pilot. Powers is later produced in a 'show trial'. On 10 February 1962, twenty-one months after his capture, Powers is exchanged along with American student Frederic Pryor in a spy swap for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel) at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, Germany. 8 June During a ground test run at Edwards Air Force Base, California, the XLR-99 rocket engine of North American X-15-3, 56–6672, explodes, destroying the aircraft aft of the wing, and throwing the forward fuselage with pilot Scott Crossfield in it 30 feet forward. Fortunately, Crossfield was not injured. 27 June A Boeing KC-97G Stratofreighter, 52-2728, of the 380th Air Refueling Squadron, Plattsburgh AFB, New York, suffers failure of lubrication on an engine impeller shaft, during an evening four-hour training mission to refuel a Boeing B-47 Stratojet. During rendezvous at 15,500 feet, bomber crew sees the tanker's number one (port outer) engine burst into flames, burning fuel threatening the wing integrity. As the bomber moves away from the burning tanker, the crew tries unsuccessfully to put out the